© Kathy Duncan, 2026
When my 2x great-grandmother, Eliza (Thompson) Kelley, applied for enrollment to the Baker Roll - Eastern Band of Cherokee, she stated that her maternal grandparents were Lawrence and Rachel (Hogan) Williams of Kershaw County, South Carolina. So far, my searches have placed Lawrence Williams in Kershaw County as early as the 1800 census. His life prior to that has been a mystery.
Recently, I found Lawrence Williams' obituary by using one of the experiments on Family Search called My Heritage Matches. Their experiment tip is this: from the individual's profile page on FamilySearch, click on the My Heritage button under Research Help. Most matches can only be seen if you also have a My Heritage subscription. Although I don't have a subscription, I tested it with Lawrence Williams anyway. Mostly, I could only see links to trees that included him, but with a lot of blurred-out fields. However, one result was from a newspaper database called OldTrees.com. I could see enough of the transcribed blurb to know that it was an obituary. The link provided me with the newspaper, the Camden Journal, and a date of September 3, 1836.
I happen to have access to that newspaper through three other databases, but none of them could find Lawrence Williams' obituary through their search engines. With some noodling, I was able to pull up the September 3, 1836, issue of the Camden Journal and find Lawrence Williams' obituary by examining each of the four pages in the issue:
This is a lot of ink to wade through to glean a few important pieces of information about Lawrence Williams:
"...the remains of Lawrence Williams. This venerable man was a native of North Carolina; but for many years a resident of this District, in which he was well known and generally esteemed for his mild, benevolent, and patriarchal character. At the commencement of the Revolutionary War, when quite a youth, he embraced the cause of Freedom; and served his time in a Lettre of Marque and Reprisal, until the vessel was taken by the enemy; and her crew made prisoners of war. On the cessation of hostilities, Mr. Williams engaged, for a livelihood, in the management of plantations, which business he followed through the rest of his life...According to his anxious wish, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was administered to him, on his sick bed...he ceased to be mortal on the 27th ult. and commenced the life eternal, in the 72d year of his age."
I had estimated that, at the earliest, Lawrence Williams could have been born in 1764, which this obituary confirms. While it is good to know that he was born in North Carolina, this does not tell me where he was born or where else he might have lived in North Carolina. It's fascinating to learn that he was aboard a Letter of Marque during the Revolution. However, this does not tell me the name of the ship nor the name of his captain. It does not tell me where they were captured, nor which prison Lawrence was confined in. There is no specific date for his move to Kershaw District and no family information. Receiving the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper might be a clue to his religious affiliation.
When the Revolution began, Lawrence Williams would have been twelve years old. That would make him a cabin boy or powder monkey if he actually went into service on a ship at the onset of the war.
As usual, I have more questions than answers. In my search for clues, I've turned to Eric Jay Dolin's Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. I've learned that there were about 1,000 Letters of Marque during the Revolution and at least 11,000 men who served on them. They were not considered pirates during that time frame.
I skipped to the chapter on prisons, like you do, and found that there was a Letter of Marque called Fair American that was constructed by the Wynn brothers on their plantation on the Chowan River in 1780. When nearly finished, it was taken downriver to Edenton to be fitted with eighteen cannons. Edenton was the major port in North Carolina during the Revolution. The crew for the Fair American was supposedly recruited in Edenton. According to some reports, the Fair American took one prize before being captured on her maiden voyage. After only a couple of months at sea, the ship was captured, and the crew of about 54 was taken in two ships to Forton prison in England. There, they plotted their escape. They attempted to tunnel out, hiding the dirt in the ceiling. Their plan was detected when a tile fell on a guard stationed outside. The prisoners refused to reveal what they had done with all of the dirt from the tunnel and let the prison officials believe that they had eaten it. They were made to haul dirt back in and fill up the tunnel. Once that was done, they promptly began digging another tunnel in a different direction. They came up in a house cellar, bound and gagged the shrieking woman there, and made their escape. Most of them were recaptured and returned to the prison.
This is a wonderful story to which I cannot link Lawrence Williams. American records about the crews of privateer ships are spotty. The English kept records of the ships they captured and the crews they imprisoned. Those records, however, are in England and have not been digitized.
If Lawrence Williams was a member of the Fair American crew, he would have been 16 when it set sail in 1780. At the close of the Revolution, Lawrence would have been only 19.
After some relentless Google searching, I finally stopped searching for the Fair American and started looking for the British ship that captured her: HMS Vestal. After capturing the Fair American, the HMS Vestal added the prisoners to her crew list. The list turned up in the State Archives of North Carolina, which I ordered. Lawrence Williams' name is not on the list.
